SUGGESTED HOUSEHOLD BUDGET PERCENTAGES HOW TO
SUGGESTED HOUSEHOLD BUDGET PERCENTAGES FREE

If you find that you are spending significantly more in a particular category, it might be time to make make a big change to start living within your means and get out of debt. If you’re looking at the budget category guidelines above and then looking at your own spending and wondering how you’re supposed to get from there to here, here are a couple of suggestions. I’ll list the Dave Ramsey categories below if you’d rather use his.

SUGGESTED HOUSEHOLD BUDGET PERCENTAGES FREE

I do my categories a little bit different than Dave, so that it works better with the free budgeting app Mint. If you’re working on creating your own budget, feel free to use the budget worksheet I created for my own budget as a starting point.Ĭlick here to grab your free Family Budget Worksheet printable

SUGGESTED HOUSEHOLD BUDGET PERCENTAGES HOW TO

(2) Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditures 2013 How to Make Your Own Debt Free Budget Your situation is probably completely different, so I’ve listed a few key tips below that can get you started on making your own debt free budget. These are just the ways we were able to ‘balance’ our budget and get out of debt fast. To cut costs on transportation, my husband drove to the park-and-ride and took the bus to work. (Again, this varies because our income fluctuated, not because we moved.) We spent just 15-20% during our debt payoff. While Dave’s housing percentage is 25-35%, we were blessed to have very affordable rent at the time. Because these are more wants than needs, we decided to spend as little as possible to help us pay off our debt faster. In fact, we spent almost nothing on clothing, entertainment, and household items. However, you can probably see from my debt free budget breakdown that we spent only 1% on clothing. The recommended Dave Ramsey clothing budget percentage is 2-7%. We followed this recommendation and focused completely on paying off debt at this time, choosing to wait on saving and giving until later, so our savings percentage is 0%. While the Dave Ramsey savings percentage is 10-15%, his baby steps say you should pay off debt first before building your 6-month emergency fund. Specifically, in the first month, we paid the midwife for the birth of our second child, so you’ll see a big variation in the health category. This is because expenses outside the usual did come up once in a while. While Ramsey’s recommended health care percentage is between 5-10%, ours ranged from 4-27%. This was due to childcare expenses while I worked part-time the last couple of months to finish up our debt payoff. Personal Categoryĭave recommends spending 5-10% in the Personal Category. This was a crucial area of savings to allow us to pay off our debt even faster. As you can see, I was able to get my food budget down to just 3% some months. The recommended Dave Ramsey food budget percentage is 5-15%. Dave Ramsey Food BudgetĪs time went on, I learned to save more, especially in the grocery category.

Others, I might have gotten paid for a big project or blog promotion. Sometimes, we had just our usual paycheck. One big reason that our percentages cover a wide range is that our income varied wildly each month as I hustled to earn as much extra from home as possible.

These varied from month to month for a few reasons. You’ll see a range of budget percentages for my real life debt free budget.

Now let’s take a look at how the dave ramsey percentages work in the real world when you’re trying to pay off debt. Where Our Budget Percentages Differed from Dave Ramsey’s Recommendation But how well do they work in the real world? Dave Ramsey Budget Percentage Breakdown Budget Categoriesĩ% (health insurance included in Medical/Health category) Dave Ramsey’s budget percentage guidelines offer one option. It’s common to wonder how big of a slice to give each budget category. Specifically, I’ll be sharing my thoughts about one of the most common questions I get asked: “How much should I be spending in each budget category?”Īnd to satisfy my own nerdy love of data, I’ll be comparing my own budget while we were working to be debt free to the budget percentage breakdown that Dave Ramsey recommends, and just for fun, the spending habits of the average American. Since our debt free story went viral, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about exactly how we did it. Today, I’ll be answering one of the most common questions by sharing my real life debt free budget percentage breakdown. How much should you spend in each budget category? This article lists the Dave Ramsey budget percentages, categories, with a sample budget so you can jumpstart your budget.

Suggested household budget percentages